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MicahElliott / QWERkey

Modal keyboard layout for X11, optimized for minimal reach
MIT License
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QWERkey Keyboard Layout

QWERkey is a modal keyboard layout for X11, optimized for staying on or near the home row. It is suited for programming (using lots of symbols easily), particularly with Emacs and Vim, but is also a big improvement for typing prose, eliminating hard-to-reach keys. It is even tuned for fully mouselessly navigating a web browser with minimal finger movement.

(Sorry this is so long; typing is just so much fun now!)

keymap diagram

All of this is accomplished by a few novelties:

QWERkey deviates from QWERTY only where necessary. It is fairly easy to pick up, and enables you to hop onto someone else's QWERTY keyboard and still feel not completely lost. Hard-to-reach keys will no longer be used, but they're still there when you accidentally lunge for them (unless you physically remove them from your keyboard like I do with some).

Children, programmers, vision impaired, the small-handed, efficiency nuts, and anyone suffering from RSI should give QWERkey a try. Please provide feedback/suggestions in a ticket.

The goal is that you never actually need to move your hand position off the home row to reach for the mouse or Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/arrow (and maybe even number) keys (but you're still allowed to). It is tragic to watch a youngster bouncing hands all around reaching for BSP et al on a traditional keyboard. It's even very bad for adults.

Here's a feel for how little space your fingers actually need to cover.

real keyboard

NOTE: QWERkey is only for Xorg/X11. So it's great for Linux or PC-BSD, but not suited for other OSes like those from Apple or Microsoft. Please let me know if you want to work on a driver.

"Key" Features

Tiling Window Managers

The diagram above shows keys (in red) for managing a TWM. If you're someone who cares a lot about layouts and sees value in minimizing mouse usage, you need a TWM — for both speed and comfort. I like i3 for its simple textual config format and light-weightedness, but have also had good trials with AwesomeWM and XMonad. A config file for i3 is included that matches the diagram. The layout is carefully designed so that navigational and number keys are consistent between modes.

If you eschew TWMs, QWERkey can still work well for you. Just ignore the red marks on the diagram.

Keyboards

There are a few keyboards that can make life much better. Features they provide:

  1. Longer key travel, enabling two-for-one key presses: the ability to press two keys with a single pinky. Flat keyboards make this harder

  2. A narrow spacebar, saving the thumbs from reaching under too far, enabling the use of five thumb keys (space, supers, metas)

  3. Pure clickety-clackety, tactile joy

Pictured above (with the green lines) is a Japanese keyboard. You can find them on Amazon for $30-70. It can be used identically to a US keyboard, but its advantage is the narrow spacebar which gives the thumbs less required distance to travel. Going Japanese is totally optional (I've often used a US keyboard with wide spacebar and can reach my thumb inward two keys (to SUP) without trouble.) I've tested a couple. A special japanese.modmap will be included soon.

The Happy Hacking Keyboard released a Japanese edition that is of a nice, small form factor. It features Topre keys, has good key action, and can be found on Amazon for $70. Expect a shipping delay. You'll want to find one that does not have Fn at the bottom-left. (Alas, I can't find one now.)

A real cheapo that works is the Gear Head 89-Key Mini USB (find it on Amazon). It feels a bit clunky, but if you only have $12 to spend, or just want to give QWERkey a whirl, go for this one for its life-changing 3-key-wide spacebar and easy-to-pop-off-and-exchange keys. It's so slim and small that you can just set it stably right on top of your laptop keyboard. I did this for a month and felt quite productive with it. A great one to buy for every kid you know.

Keep an eye on this development of the Planck Keyboard Kit. Truly minimalistic, having only a couple unneeded/unusable keys (bottom-left and -right). Seems a match made in heaven for QWERkey. Love the tiny footprint. Unfortunately, very hard to find, and I can't get my hands on one.

I'm about to try out the Atreus. Looks like building it will mean a blown weekend, but probably worth it. Almost identical to Planck, but better wrist angles. No, wait; it's missing the outer pinky columns. So this won't work.

I'm aware of many of the ergonomic keyboards; here is a survey. I don't see any of these being as good as QWERKey at maintaining a home-row position. My fingers are not able to reach down two rows. Furthermore, long-term use of these make it much harder for you to hop onto a traditional keyboard.

I'm interested to see what will become of Ergodox, Lots of potential there, but goes beyond QWERkey's plans. And, I think 12 thumb keys is way too much. Combine them with xcape and you've got up to 24 pieces to juggle on two fingers. I'm skeptical.

I was excited about the Majestouch Minila with Cherry MX blues. My hope was that you could dip-switch the function keys to be mappable for QWERkey, but it sadly turns them into ambiguous spacebars. So this is a no-go.

The Truly Ergonomic looks interesting, but I've seen so much complaining about their tech support and quality that I'm afraid to spend $250 on a dud. Plus, you'd have to ignore most of those middle keys unless you have really long index fingers.

Ergo keyboards do provide a sweet accidental feature: the two-key spacebar! Since it's so easy to rely on a single thumb for typing a space, we get a free key out of the other spacebar. It can make for a different QWERkey design. Most are too big for my tastes, though.

Installation

Install xcape.

If you think you'll want to tweak the layout, fork this QWERkey repo. Otherwise, just clone it.

You'll want X to enable QWERkey at start-up, so put the following into your .xinitrc:

/path/to/qwerkey.zsh

The default keyboard style is gearhead. You can pass in a specific modmap. E.g., to use the minila.xmodmap:

/path/to/qwerkey.zsh minila

If you want to integrate a tiling window manager (e.g., i3), create a symlink to its config:

mkdir ~/.i3
ln -s /path/to/qwerkey/i3-config ~/.i3/config

(Feel free to contribute a similar AwesomeWM or XMonad config.)

Differences from QWERTY

You'll need to re-key your brain and fingers a bit.

For prose, very little has changed from QWERTY: you mostly just need to stop reaching so far. \;= have been moved to QRK access. For this, you get a much better RET, SHF, and BSP.

For coding, most symbols are now accessible consistently through the QRK modifier. All combinations of CTL, SHF, META/ALT, and QRK are fully accessible through the comfort of your left hand. And the symbols have been carefully placed for memory and ease of access.

Training

gtypist is a cute and simple little console-based typing tutor. It has several standard lessons, plus some limited lessons on using symbol characters. You'll probably want to practice normal typing lessons to get used to the new right-shift, enter, etc, locations.

There are some symbol-specific lessons included here that you can use to acclimate yourself to all of QWERkey. Fire up GTypist on a lesson with:

gtypist practice/lesson1.typ

If you wish to create/compile your own lessons (please consider contributing them here), download gtypist for a compiling tool it provides. Inspect QWERkey's lesson1.ktouch file to learn the very simple lesson format.

git clone https://github.com/alexei-matveev/gtypist
cd gtypist/tools
perl ktouchOLD2typ.pl /path/to/your/new-lesson.ktouch

Tips & Tools

Rather than the clever C-h, there's now a decently placed BSP. Years ago, I fell in love with C-h for backspace in terminals and Vim, but it was maddening not having it outside the editor, popping up history or who-knows-what. Now it's reachable, and works everywhere.

Key chords are hard enough to get right with one hand. Don't spread them across two. Any sequence should be attainable with a single hand — even C-Q-S-M-foo. The foo might be either hand, but the modifiers are all left (in this case).

It may help to think of QRK/Q- as a Symbol key. It couldn't be called the S- key since that's already overloaded by Shift and Super.

Use the right-CTL for left keys. E.g., in Emacs, save with right-CTL and x s rather than do the whole thing left-handed.

Prefer C-u C-u C-n to move down 16 lines, rather than C-16 C-n. Or if you need to use numbers, get used to holding Q-S- with just the left pinky. You can even pinky-barré the first part of C-Q-S-8 C-f and then smoothly lift in the single C-f.

There is a Firefox add-on called Mouseless Browsing that augments all links with a visible number. With QWERkey's numpad you can browse from the home row without a mouse.

Use xev to see what keys are being pressed. If you find some key combos not working, make sure they register as a KeyPress event in xev's monitor.

Keyboard stickers will really help you in the early weeks in getting through the learning curve. You could try clicking on and printing the PNG at the top of this page onto "sticker paper". Then cut them out with scissors and stick 'em on! A label maker with clear/transparent paper might also work well.

Colored keycaps will help you remember keys by grouping. The the WASD reference above.

Tactile "keyboard bumps" (search Amazon) are very helpful for keeping/finding your position. I place them on left-CTL, f, j, QRK, and BSP.

Conkeror is an Emacs-like web browser that eschews the mouse. I prefer a tweaked Firefox, but some anti-mouse zealots swear by it.

Design Details, Philosophy, and Trade-offs (for the curious)

Moving off the home row is awful for staying in a typing/navigating flow. Vim goes a long way to solve this, but still we suffer from parts of QWERTY being too spread out. Emacs relies on arrow keys and backspace for some things, like window movement and org-mode shortcuts. Browsers, word processors, and other applications rely on navigational keys a lot. So peripheral keys need to be integrated into the home row. This minimized movement is what QWERkey accomplishes.

You need a non-chicklet keyboard in order to press two keys at once with a single finger. This is helpful for things like C-S-RET.

Keyboards have certain traditions that will be hard to break. Some of them are even good ones, so why break them? CTL really needs to be left of the left pinky. Emacs and Vim rely on it for nearly everything. Shifts need to be where you expect them to be. Alt/Meta are always next to the spacebar, and are very important for Emacs and many other tools. The most common keys need to remain where they are. This enables you to type on other keyboards. Sometimes you need to treat a laptop as something that sits on your lap!

Some keys need symmetry. You really benefit from having a CTL on both sides.

I'd prefer mnemonics for all symbols — imagine Q-b → ! (bang), and Q-e → = (equals). But *we're just so dang used to `!@#$%^&` up top**. So just stick with those.

Xorg is not capable of adding more than one additional modifier (at least not without getting into advanced setxkbmap setup). So we're stuck with simply using Mode_switch for the symbols made available by the single QRK key. However, you can feasibly use Q and S together with just the left pinky (or with left-pinky-and-ring) to make another modifier. This is how the num-pad (purple) is accessed. Anyway, I don't see a good place on the right side for another QRK key.

Choosing a QRK location is quite tricky, since it needs to be a key that will not be followed very quickly by another, given xcape behavior; e.g., . is tricky since you'll commonly follow it quickly with a spacebar before removing your finger from the ..

Xorg does not recognize C-Q-z, C-Q-x, or C-Q-q as an actual key press on my laptop keyboard. This is really lame. However, I do see those combos working on other USB plug-in keyboards. Hopefully it's just my laptop that has trouble.

Even though high-row numeric keys (especially 5, 6, and 7) are rather hard to reach, it's hard to make them go away for a S-Q- num-pad sequence near the home row. Chords in browsers (M-3 for third tab) and in Emacs (C-20 C-n for down 20 lines) can feel interrupted by reaching for extra modifiers mid-command. But a keyboard like Planck requires it, so I'll try it.

The num-pad needed to be on the right side for it to be accessible. You're chording, say, Q-S-o with the left hand to make a 3. If the o etc. were on the left side, this would be too hard. Since the num-pad wound up on the right, the WM's numbers also needed to be there. This forced the arrow keys to the left side. And the critical symbols (<>{}=;|.~+) needed to be on the right side, anyway.

The num-pad follows the telephone layout rather than tradition. Some research suggests that phone is more intuitive/natural, and my brain certainly fits that.

Mnemonics

Many of the keys are the same as in QWERTY, but a few need slots, the only open ones being opkl,.

~ → ocean: Think of an "ocean wave". This is an odd one, but it does help to think of a symbol as a thing, rather than an action.

+ → plus: easy peasy.

= → eek: I've heard "equals" spoken as "eek", especially as in "eek-eek." The k is the only consonant and easy to emphasize.

| → straight-l: Think of this as a tall/narrow l.

; → dotted comma: Think of it as a modified comma

: → dotted period: Think of it as a modified period

Reach farther, go farther

Q-End is a farther reach than Q-PgDn. This makes sense because it takes you farther down the page. The same goes for M-Q-> (end-of-buffer) in Emacs taking you farther than M-Q-} (forward-paragraph).

Extended Characters

The "Compose" key (AKA Multi_key) is a pretty cool way to type things like fancy symbols and characters from other languages. E.g., I'm creating this π with CMP g p (think "greek pi"). And an → is CMP - >. Since these only take a few key presses, it's probably not worth populating unused QWERkeys (e.g., Q-S-p → π) with things like the Greek alphabet. You'll notice that CMP is in a less convenient spot, but it's only a (probably rare) tap-key. You might have to do a little setup to get all the characters you're after. So, included in this repo is a .XCompose file including Greek symbols. Put this in your $HOME (via symlink or copy).

I'm considering populating some of the unused keys for the most common diacritics and symbols, like ñ¿¡é, etc.

See /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose for the full list composable combos.

Non-Editor Shortcuts (browsers, etc)

Browsers and other apps rely frequently on arrow keys and other combos involving Home/End/PgUp/PgDn.

C-PgUp/PgDn — tab left — becomes C-Q-f/v

M-Left/Right — back button — becomes M-Q-a/d

M-<N> — N is a number for which tab to visit — Q-S-M-N

Alternative Right-QRK Key Layout

There is actually an alternative right-hand-QRK layout available. I used it for a couple weeks and liked it. The only downside is that you have to train yourself to pause to release . before pressing space. Otherwise, I really like having . as Q-.

License

GPL. See LICENSE.md.